2007-04-19

On an early date for Acts — and its problems

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by Neil Godfrey

One of the historical giants of biblical scholarship, Adolf von Harnack, from 1908 argued for the Book of Acts being composed possibly as early as the 60s ce, in the lifetime of the apostle Paul. His reasons: Continue reading “On an early date for Acts — and its problems”


Big Brother News tells us Europe meets U.S. on the Missile Shield

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Duh . . . so Big Brother News Voice says Europe has now agreed to allow US to build a missile shield around much (not all) of that continent, to guard against the threat, of course, of ‘rogue states’ like Iran. (For ‘rogue state’ read state who does not submit to the will and whim of the U.S. and who has yet to pay the price for daring oppose the Boss of the Whole World back in President Jimmy Carter days.)

And why would European states now at this time finally agree to go along with the Missile Shield? Why no threat perceived before now? Well, one does wonder about how the U.S. usually goes about getting support for its projects — economic bribes and threats. So that’s why News reports sound so Orwellian — they make it sound like Europe has now seen ‘eye to eye’ with the U.S. More likely, as common sense and experience would tell us, they now see more clearly and in focus nice fresh American dollars.

And a Missile Shield for “defence”? So what wasn’t needed to defend againt the Soviet Union is now needed to defend against Iran who doesn’t even have a nuclear missile?

The threat of guaranteed total annihilation in retaliation for any nuclear strike is not enough?? This sort of fear-mongering is all from the same Monty Python cloth as Saddam threatening to launch missiles on the U.S. mainland!

Of course to any rational person the intent of the Missile Shield is clear. It is to position the U.S. to be able to threaten and attack any country without substantially reduced risk of their target being able to retaliate in any way at all. But you don’t get rational or two-sided reporting on the News bytes.